New York City has filed a lawsuit against major social media companies, accusing them of contributing to a youth mental health crisis through the design and operation of their platforms.
The FTC is investigating seven AI companies, including Google, Meta, and OpenAI, to determine how they protect children and teenagers who use their AI chatbots as companions.
A new study led by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) has found that increased social media use among pre-teens is associated with a massive 35 percent rise in symptoms of depression.
Texas is on the verge of implementing the most stringent social media ban for minors in the United States, with a new bill making its way through the state legislature.
A coalition of teen and adult activists against “digital abuse” targeting youth took to Washington, DC, on Tuesday with Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) standing with them to support the creation of legislation and a nationwide movement.
Australia is rushing to get a new law banning children under 16 from using most social media platforms through parliament.
Canadian police are disrupting a growing number of Islamic State terrorist plots in major cities, a resurgence driven by ISIS recruiting young Canadians to its ranks.
Former President Donald Trump’s campaign has debuted a Snapchat advertisement targeting young voters despite being banned from the platform. The campaign had refrained from advertising on Snapchat up to this point due to the account ban.
A federal judge has ruled that major tech companies must face lawsuits brought by school districts alleging their social media apps have contributed to a mental health crisis among students. The lawsuits target Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, Google, China’s TikTok, and Snapchat.
Vice President Kamala Harris is leaning on celebrities such as pop music superstars Usher and Taylor Swift to increase her support in the final stretch of the 2024 presidential campaign. In a press release on Friday, the Harris-Walz campaign revealed
Vice President Kamala Harris been dominating Snapchat in the battle for young voters, partly due to the platform’s refusal to reinstate former President Donald Trump’s personal account while simultaneously begging his campaign to advertise on the platform.
A former Texas preschool employee has pleaded guilty to paying two minor boys $200 to record child pornography after contacting them via Snapchat, according to prosecutors.
The newly unsealed complaint of the lawsuit filed by the New Mexico Attorney General against Snap, the company behind the Snapchat social media platform, reveals that employees were well aware of the app’s dangers to children, including sextortion, illicit gun sales, and addictive features.
Social media platforms including Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook and Instagram, China’s TikTok, and Snapchat have become dangerous marketplaces for the sale of deadly fake pills laced with fentanyl, contributing to a growing epidemic of overdose deaths among young Americans.
The New Mexico attorney general has filed a lawsuit against Snap, accusing the company of fostering an environment on its Snapchat app that enables the sexual exploitation and sextortion of children.
Snapchat is refusing to reinstate former President Donald Trump’s account while asking the 45th president to advertise with the social media platform, according to the Trump campaign.
A Delaware private Catholic school teacher has been arrested for sending nude photos to a 14-year-old student on Snapchat, police said.
A Wisconsin man is accused of trying to groom a seventh-grade student for sex via Snapchat messages when he was a teacher in Kenosha.
A convicted sex offender is asking the Norwegian Supreme Court to declare that social media access is a human right.
Snapchat has adjusted its ‘Solar System’ feature, turning it off by default, in response to recent criticism and concerns over its potential negative impact on teens’ mental health and relationships. The Solar System feature serves as a friend-ranking tool, driving teen anxiety by making them worry about their social status. One teen explains, “It’s everyone’s biggest fear put onto an app.”
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Snapchat’s friend ranking feature, part of its paid subscription service, is exacerbating feelings of insecurity and anxiety among teenagers by quantifying their social status within their friend group. The feature is just another example of how Silicon Valley titans place tremendous pressure on today’s teens to be part of the “in crowd,” leading one teen to explain, “It’s everyone’s biggest fear put onto an app.”
Newly unsealed court documents from an ongoing class action lawsuit against Meta show that in 2016, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg personally directed executives to “figure out” how to track encrypted usage on competing apps like Snapchat, YouTube, and Amazon.
Snap, the maker of the social media platform Snapchat, says it will lay off 10 percent of its global workforce, around 500 employees, to “promote in-person collaboration.”
Executives from TikTok, Meta, X (Twitter), Snap, and Discord will testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the exploitation of children online.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is set to testify before the US Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday to defend Facebook and Instagram’s impact on young users amid ongoing scrutiny of the tech giant’s social media platforms. Executives of Snapchat, TikTok, X/Twitter, and Discord will also testify.
Online “sextortion” is the fastest-growing crime targeting kids in the West, and social media companies are failing to do more to prevent it, according to a recent study.
A recent study claims that almost half of all British teenagers view themselves as addicted to social media, reigniting debates on the impact of online platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter on younger users.
A recent study by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health has revealed that social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok X/Twitter, and YouTube collectively earned nearly $11 billion in advertising revenue from U.S. users under 18 in 2022. The study found that the social media Masters of the Universe earned $2.1 billion by showing ads to children under 12.
The House investigated a second gay sex scandal as Washington, DC, reels from the initial graphic pornographic video filmed by a Senate aide.
A Florida substitute teacher was arrested Thursday morning after two of his female students accused him of sex crimes.
The CEOs of Meta, X/Twitter, TikTok, Snapchat, and Discord are set to testify January 31 before the U.S. Senate “about their failure to protect children” on social media.
A 24-year-old Missouri teacher is facing child sex abuse charges after allegedly trading x-rated images and videos with a 16-year-old student in an attempt to lure him for sex while her husband was away.
A New York middle school principal was charged with attempted rape after using Snapchat to meet up with a 16-year-old at a remote location.
Social media giants TikTok and Snapchat heard a plea for help Friday from French President Emmanuel Macron as he looks for ways to tamp down coverage of the violent riots engulfing the country.
Arkansas has joined Utah and Texas in passing a bill requiring age verification for children using social media in this case the Social Media Safety Act. However, the law has attracted criticism from some conservative policy analysts over its explicit carve out for the biggest social media platform for teenagers: Google-owned YouTube.
A teacher’s assistant lost her job after being accused of having sex with a 15-year-old student in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania.
Caryn Marjorie, a 23-year-old Snapchat influencer, has created a voice-based, AI-powered chatbot of herself, which can be the “virtual girlfriend” of subscribers who pay $1 per minute to chat with it. Marjorie says her AI chatbot, CarynAI, could earn $5 million per month.
A former Oklahoma high school teacher has been arrested for allegedly exchanging “lewd and indecent messages” with multiple students.
A former school cafeteria worker who allegedly sexually assaulted a teenager in New Fairfield, Connecticut, has pleaded not guilty.
